2017 Hobel Wine Works The Grain Cabernet Sauvignon

Hobel Wine Works started as a dream in 1998, when Cameron Hobel and Thomas Rivers Brown met. Hobel had been a wine sales executive at several auction houses, including Christie’s, and had launched his own wine import company. Brown was a rising star in Napa Valley winemaking, first working as assistant winemaker at Turley Wine Cellars. For a decade Hobel and Brown talked about starting a wine project together, and in 2009 they produced their first Hobel Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Today the estate is owned by Hobel and his wife Bahaneh. Brown, now a highly acclaimed winemaker involved in numerous winemaking enterprises, makes Hobel wines. The estate produces a single Cabernet Sauvignon, generally available only through a mailing list.

Napa Valley AVA is the most famous winemaking region in the United States and one of the most prestigious in the world. With nearly 43,000 acres of vineyards and more than 300 wineries, it is the heart of fine wine production in the United States. Winemaking started in Napa in 1838 when George C. Yount planted grapes and began producing wine commercially. Other winemaking pioneers followed in the late 19th century, including the founders of Charles Krug, Schramsberg, Inglenook and Beaulieu Vineyards. An infestation of phylloxera, an insect that attacks vine roots, and the onset of Prohibition nearly wiped out the nascent Napa wine industry in the early 20th century. But by the late 1950s and early 1960s Robert Mondavi and other visionaries were producing quality wines easily distinguishable from the mass-produced jug wines made in California’s Central Valley. Napa Valley’s AVA was established in 1983, and today there are 16 sub-appellations within the Napa Valley AVA. Many grapes grow well in Napa’s Mediterranean climate, but the region is best known for Cabernet Sauvignon. Chardonnay is also very successfully cultivated, and about 30% of the AVA’s acreage is planted to white grapes, with the majority of those grapes being Chardonnay,

One of the most widely grown grape varieties, it can be found in nearly every wine growing region. A cross between Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc. It’s a hardy vine that produces a full-bodied wine with high tannins and great aging potential.